The ultimate in slackline tree padding

I’m always improving little aspects of my slackline setup, and in early 2010 I realized that the towel strips I was using would be way better if they were tubes instead of strips. I started using duct tape to make them into tubes, and then eventually began to sew them. The strips fray and give off little bits of terry cloth fuzz that clog sewing machines and ultimately broke the one that belongs to my partner (sorry) after sewing about 4-5 tubes. But those first tubes worked great, and I eventually contracted a local craftsperson to make me a huge lot of tubes using reclaimed thrift store fluffy bath towels.

Many people have admired my tree padding, but I noticed few actually had the time or inclination to make their own towel-based padding. So I decided to offer a low-cost solution for those who would rather just cough up a few bucks and get some sweet pre-made Towel Tubes in the mail. So, without further delay, watch the video above, or visit toweltubes.com.

2 Comments

what about when you wrap a water knotted sling around a tree multiple times? does the towel tube scrunch up and leave exposed webbing to vs the tough bark? love the idea though and will most certainly be making some…sorry for not being lazy adam! LOVE the site.

EDIT FROM ADAM: I’ve had no issue wrapping with multiple tubes (for big trees) or doubling a sling over and dropping it inside a tube. Most tubes could fit several slings, so even a 20ft sling folded over in half and then in half again would fit fine.

This is a great idea, and appears to be ar superior to any method of padding that I have seen or used in the past. On a slightly unrelated note, I noticed when you showed your gibbon line in the video that you had some kind of line protectors on the ratchet. I myself have made a few attempts at making donut shaped cutouts from plastic and plexiglass to guard my jibline from the jaws of those wretched beasts, but I’m curious as to what it was that you were using there?

Thanks for making such kickass videos!

Matt

EDIT FROM ADAM: those are the gibbon oem spacers on their 1″ ratchets. I think some euro slackliner companies also sell them as addons (slack.fr or landcruising … can’t recall offhand!)